"A second wave of job loss is hitting those who thought they were safe," the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. "Businesses that set up employees to work from home are laying them off as sales plummet. Corporate lawyers are seeing jobs dry up. Government workers are being furloughed as state and city budgets are squeezed. And health care workers not involved in fighting the pandemic are suffering."
In a Monday MintPress News article titled "Bodies in the Streets: IMF Imposed Measures Have Left Ecuador Unable to Cope with Coronavirus," Alan MacLeod writes, "Ecuador is near collapse under the strain of the coronavirus after the government of Lenin Moreno stripped state services nearly bare at the behest of the IMF [International Monetary Fund]." What’s going on in Ecuador and with President Moreno?
"With much of the world focused on the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump Administration has begun a major military buildup in the Caribbean, sending US warships and aircraft to the region while planning for the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro," Edward Hunt wrote Monday in The Progressive. “'We’re deploying additional Navy destroyers, combat ships, aircraft, and helicopters; Coast Guard cutters; and Air Force surveillance aircraft, doubling our capabilities in the region,' President Trump announced in a press briefing at the White House on April 1." What are we to make of all of this?
"Pressure is growing on ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to quickly release as many detainees as possible, as migrants stage protests and a flurry of legal actions bear down on the agency," Felipe De La Hoz reported Monday in The Intercept. "Yet ICE remains recalcitrant, opaque, and unpredictable in its decision-making. One side effect of the coronavirus outbreak may be a growing awareness of just how many people in ICE detention simply don’t have to be there."
GUESTS:
Dr. Linwood Tauheed — Associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Alan MacLeod — Academic and journalist. He is a staff writer at MintPress News and a contributor to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), as well as the author of "Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting."
Teri Mattson — Code Pink Latin America coordinator and founder and coordinator for the Campaign to End US and Canada Sanctions Against Venezuela.
Nino Pagliccia — Activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. A retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada, Pagliccia is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas, and is also the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations.”
Maru Mora-Villalpando - Nationally known immigrant-rights activist, co-founder of the Latinx organization Mijente and a community organizer with Northwest Detention Center Resistance.
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